Giuseppe Arcimboldo The Complete Works. Giuseppe Arcimboldo also spelled Arcimboldi; - July 11, was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books - that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognisable likeness of the portrait subject. Arcimboldo was born in Milan in , the son of Biagio, a painter who did work for the office of the Fabbrica in the Duomo.
Arcimboldo was commissioned to do stained glass window designs beginning in , including the Stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria vitrage at the Duomo. In he worked with Giuseppe Meda on frescoes for the Cathedral of Monza. In , he drew the cartoon for a large tapestry of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which still hangs in the Como Cathedral today. Page 1 of 10 Paintings: Report error on this page. He is often credited as a source of inspiration for Surrealist artists, and some recent shows dedicated to the artist took place in at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome and the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao in Spain.
All Rights reserved. October 1, am. Read More About: Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Powered by WordPress. Our Sites. Close the menu Menu. ARTnews Expand the sub menu. Art In America Logo Expand the sub menu. Additionally, the four portraits in Arcimboldo's later series Four Elements - Air, Fire, Earth and Water - correspond with spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively.
The overall effect of the two series is to suggest thus that the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II who commissioned both sets of paintings influences everything on the earth down to its most primal forces. By combining objects and creatures into faces, moreover, Arcimboldo transforms chaos into harmony, which could also be seen as a reflection on the Holy powers of the Emperor.
As art historian Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann confirms: the paintings were intended to be humorous, but "the humor resolves itself in a serious way," probably as a comment on the majesty of the ruler. Though Arcimboldo is best known for his portraits made up of flowers, vegetables and fruits, the artist also made several portraits made of other assembled objects with relevance to the sitter. For example The Waiter depicts a server made up of crockery, whilst this portrait, The Librarian , is made up of objects that were associated with libraries.
These include books comprising the body, head and hair , study room curtains the clothing and animal-tail dusters the beard. Perhaps owing to the nature of the subject matter, the overall impression of the figure is quite disjointed in comparison to previous portraits. The hard edges of the books disrupt the overall impression of a portrait and render the subject robotic in appearance.
It is possible that this lack of humanity is a contributing factor to the controversy surrounding this portrait, arising from the suggestion that Arcimboldo intended this portrait to mock scholars and the wealthy elite.
Since books were available only to the very rich, many owners collected them as status symbols whilst being unable to read the contents of their collections. The subject of this portrait is made up of books yet brings no additional contribution or personal characteristics to the table. Unlike Arcimboldo's portrait The Jurist of the same year, the subject of the portrait has not been identified. This might also suggest that Arcimboldo had in mind a group or class of people as opposed to an individual.
The Jurist is a disturbing portrait of a member of the legal profession. His head is made up of poultry and fish and his body of legal documents. Whereas in previous portraits such as Four Elements Arcimboldo has chosen the collaged elements to represent the nobility and benevolence of his patrons, this portrait is intended to discredit and defame.
The use of meat and poultry to make up the lawyer's face illustrates the artist's attitude towards his subject. The expression on the lawyer's face is sneering and his very person is made up of what is thought to be rotting flesh.
Particularly distasteful are his fish-bone moustache, fish tail beard and decapitated frog nose. It is not known with any certainty whether the sitter is a particular lawyer or if The Jurist is a caricature of the legal profession in general. If the portrait does indeed show Zasius, then the poor light in which he has been painted could be a reflection of his reputation for dishonesty in his service to the Emperor - the first intended viewer of this portrait.
It is also possible that Arcimboldo's portrait mocks Zasius's disfigurement, which he is thought to have contracted as a result of a sexually transmitted disease. This painting is one of several by the artist that can be viewed in reverse, showing a still-life from one perspective and a portrait from the other sometimes referred to as an "Arcimboldo palindrome".
It is thought that Arcimboldo painted the works first as still lifes, subsequently rotating them to reveal and adjust the faces.
X-ray evidence shows that this process often required the artist to repaint some of the fruits, having changed their positions. The similarities of the work to visual puzzle responds to the Renaissance fascination with such riddles and David Alan Brown describes the viewer of these kinds of works as "hav[ing] the same pleasure, as if they were playing a game.
Focusing more on the subject matter than the composition of the portrait, authors Dr. As such, they propose that the figure portrayed could be the Greek god of fertility and protector of horticulture, Priapus. This would correspond with others of Arcimboldo's works that represent deities, for example Flora and Vertumnus c.
The subject of the portrait is Flora, the Roman goddess of flowering plants, fruit and the spring. Typically for the artist, her form is composed of whole flowers, buds, petals, stems and leaves. However this portrait, and Vertumnus which follows it, stand out from their predecessors due to their subtlety and delicacy of technique. Whereas Arcimboldo's portraits could be grotesque, Flora adheres more to traditional understandings of beauty in portraiture. The artist's use of miniature flowers to compose the entire image in such detail has endowed the subject with a convincing sense of three-dimensions and allowed him to carefully delineate the features.
This approach contrasts with his previous portraits which are more ostensibly collaged.
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